EDITORIAL. 845 



Icoishiturc tho :icc-eptancc oi" the Fcdcrul land o-raiit of 1862, as.sumino- 

 cltargc of the colleov property in ISCO, and upon the opening of the 

 college the following 3'ear ))ec'oming its first professor of agriculture — 

 one of the very few in the land at the time. He occupied that chair 

 without interru})tion until 1SS2, and again in l>S8S-89, serving twice 

 in the meantime as acting president. He was president of the college 

 from 1880 to 1882. 



It was no fault of his that those years included some of the darkest 

 in the history of the college. It was rather the unreadiness of the 

 times. Opposition was strong, often bitter, and the public mind was 

 hardly prepared for this new kind of education. It is to the credit of 

 the institution that it held its place as a distincth' agricultural college, 

 and gradual!}' gained recognition for its work and a public sentiment 

 to bear it up. His strength and vigor and perseverance counted for 

 much in those trying times. 



Professor Stockbridge lived to see the teaching of agriculture gradu- 

 ally assume pedagogic form, many of the old ideas supplanted, and 

 the subject so developed and specialized that instead of a single pro- 

 fessor of agriculture a corps of specially trained men are required at 

 the leading institutions; but the service which he and others of his 

 type rendered in preparing the way for this development was of 

 untold value and was fundamental in the evolution of this new branch 

 of instruction. 



As he was a leading spirit in the establishment of the agricultural 

 college, so he was one of the prime movers for the experiment station. 

 With Goessmann and Clark he conducted lield and laboratorj' experi- 

 ments which attracted wide interest and helped to show the practical 

 value of experimental work to the farmer. The claims which he made 

 in his urgent appeals for the experiment station have been more than 

 justified with the passage of 3'ears; and the national growth and influ- 

 ence of the stations in this country, which probably surpass anything 

 pictured by his keen and far-seeing imagination, is but another indi- 

 cation of the progressive times in which we live. 



His was an active, earnest, useful life in the public service of agri- 

 culture. We glorj^ in his having lived to see its advancement in so 

 many directions. All honor to those pioneers like himself, who, with 

 courage and perseverance born of their convictions, fought out the 

 battles of our agricultural institutions in the darker da3's of their 

 history, and paved the way for their present success and prosperity. 

 2672L'— Nu. 9— U4 2 



